Chapter 19 - Tables Turned (1)

'That should be enough. Now I better catch up to the girl before it's too late.' Taheton thought to himself before slowly making his way to the entrance.

He had to be more careful than he had been before. Since Zok was gone, the spiders were clueless as to what they could do now and were actively looking for someone else to prey on. Hence Taheton had a hard time walking around as he pleased. He was more or less sure that the beasts had turned to their secondary sense. This meant that they were completely dependent on sensing the vibrations coming from the ground thus if he was to try and run now the arachnids would be chewing his bones before he could even make it to the exit.

'Gotta make sure to get away from here with small and silent steps... If I haste now, I'll be dead before I could even scream for help. Come on now... just a little bit more.'

Taheton was making his way towards his freedom, albeit slowly, but it was better than to die there. But someone had different plans for him. Just as he was about to exit the chamber, he could feel loud thumping noise from the other side of the chamber. It felt as if something huge was charging towards him.

However, right now he wasn't worried about the thing that was causing the thumping. He was more worried about the spiders, because if he could feel the ground thumping, so could the Arachnids, which was bad news for him. He turned around and sure enough the spiders had noticed the loud thumping and had turned towards him, as he was standing right in front of the entrance.

The Arachnids charged at him, however, someone else was thirsty for his blood too. The moment he turned around to face the spiders, something huge ran him over. The impact was so strong that he was flung over right in front of the Arachnid queen.

He spurted out a mouthful of blood as soon as he touched the ground. He could feel that his insides were a mess. However, rather than checking himself for wounds, he looked up and saw a terrifying sight. The Arachnid queen's disgusting face was right in front of his. Not only that, all of the other arachnids had him surrounded.

'It's fine... they can't see me...' Taheton thought to himself, but something felt wrong.

The way the beasts were looking at him made him feel uncomfortable. It almost felt that they could in fact see him. It was then he realised something... he couldn't feel his arm. He was so scared of the beasts, he hadn't even noticed that his arm was missing and along with it was his bracelet.

"How did this... happen..." He mumbled absentmindedly before turning towards the exit.

There he saw the biggest Direwolf standing with his severed arm in its mouth.

'Kaira... that bitch!'

Kaira wasn't someone who would have abandoned Zok no matter what he told her to do. Thus as soon as Sera was safely out of the cave, rather than taking her all the way to the tribe like Zok had instructed Kaira, she dropped Sera off and ran back inside to help Zok.

That's when she noticed Taheton trying to sneak away. She knew it was Taheton because of his strange because of his smell. The bracelet Taheton was given by the Shamans could only hide his physical appearance and not completely erase his existence.

Kaira had a sharp sense of smell that could even smell the intention of someone. It wasn't all that difficult for her to notice that she couldn't smell Zok anymore. Thus she attacked the last person she had seen with him. Right before Kaira collided with Taheton, she bit on whatever was in front of her. Luckily, it turned out to be Taheton's hand.

the two of them collided and as a result, Taheton was flung away. But since she had firmly bit onto his arm, it got severed from his body and hence without his bracelet, he was now visible to the Arachnids. But even if Kaira had not got his hand, Taheton's blood was enough to attract the beasts towards him.

"no... no... NOOOOO!" Taheton screamed as the arachnids started tearing him to pieces.

He tried to escape even as he was being devoured. He was kicking and punching them away, but it was all in vain. There were just too many spiders for him to escape. Even the cave shook by his last screams. Kaira took advantage of the distraction and rushed over to the pool. It was the only place that still had some traces of Zok.

But even Kaira couldn't save someone who pushed into a pool of acid. However, she had more things to worry about than Zok. Taheton might have served as a decent distraction for the spiders, but there were hundreds of spiders and Taheton was alone. It barely took them a few seconds to devour him. Not even his bones were left behind.

Sadly, devouring a human wasn't enough to quell their hunger, they wanted more and the only edible thing in the cave was Kaira. The spiders didn't waste a second and rushed over to feast on the Direwolf next. But killing her wasn't going to be as easy as killing Taheton.

She fought bravely and managed to kill more spiders than anyone else had. But in the end, the spiders proved to be too much even for her to handle. Soon she was swarmed by them as her white fur turned blue with her blood. It seemed like it would be over for her soon, but then someone ripped the spiders off of her.

"GET OFF OF MY PARTNER!!!" Zok roared in rage before killing the spiders around him in one swoop of his spear.

He looked nothing like he did before. He was taller than before and was at least 6 feet tall. Even his body had gotten buffed up. his hair too had changed colours. But his overall appearance remained the same. However, the most interesting thing was.... he was standing there naked yet he felt more confident than he had ever before in his life.